The article says that the SEC officials who are opposing the settlement may withdraw their disagreement in return for proceedings being brought against a former Controller of the company. This Financial Controller is not named. I may be wrong, wasn't Donald G DeBuck CSC's Corporate Controller at the time of the accounting irregularities?

Whoever the Controller involved is, it seems incredible that there could be SEC proceedings against him or her while the CEO and CFO at the time, Michael Laphen and Michael Mancuso escape punishment. What happened to the concept that "the buck stops at the top"??

Whatever; I cannot imagine Mike Lawrie is too pleased by the prospect of this SEC investigation reopening.

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Anonymous
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Don DeBuck was the Controller at the time of the irregularities. The article you referenced did state that the SEC was also considering issuing complaints agains the former CEO and CFO. Since all of them were required to certify financial reporting and financial statements they are legally as culpable as DeBuck was.

Unbelievable. . A market analyst who can see through the smoke and mirrors. .certainly my experience within GIS in the UK.. oh sorry. .desktop as a service... network as a service.. datacentre managing old tin... list goes on...

What I meant 07:12 is that its absolutely pure coincidence that all layer 2-4 appointments globally are people with names from the Indian subcontinent?

I'm not trying to be racist (and I'll stress that I hate racism!) I'm just saying that this is not a case of CSC "offshoring" these management positions to lower cost places or promoting some of CSC India's very talented people to high places elsewhere in CSC (AUS, US, UK etc).... this is externally hiring people with one characteristic - that their face will fit to the new Indian owners of commercial CSC.

Actually, that's probably a racist hiring policy but the charge sheet is so full already that's there's no room to write that on it.

The article references the fines and penalties the SEC has levied on Laphen. They are not much more than petty cash in relation to the millions Laphen collected in his 5 years as CEO plus his termination package. But will he actually pay anything out of his own pocket? I recall reading somewhere that CSC had indemnified him as part of his termination package.

What is truly surprising to me is the absence of SEC charges against Guy Hains, President of CSC Europe at the time of the NHS irregularities and the Danish accounting fraud. He was also the lead executive personally accountable for NHS. He collected the big performance bonuses, not Wakefield nor Edwards.

There is an interesting piece in the New York Times about the negotiations between CSC and the UK NHS when the project was already in trouble. The article explains how CSC then used the results of these negotiations for their accounting fraud:

It is an incredible indictment of the CSC executives involved in these negotiations. Until I read this article I wondered to what extent the accounting irregularities around NHS were due to negligence as opposed to being willful. I have no doubts any more!

It would seem appropriate for the CPA Institute to instigate disciplinary proceedings against them for their roles in these accounting frauds, which the SEC described one of the biggest for years.

Exclusion from the CPA Institute, and the surrounding publicity, would be a well-deserved piece of public humiliation for these two. Or have they already voluntarily resigned their CPA memberships to prevent their exclusion?